"Soul" in Blake's writing: redeeming the word

Wordsworth Circle, Wntr, 2002 by Nancy Moore Goslee

(5.) See Priestley, Disquisitions, p. 34: "Dr. Clark seems to have imagined that he had fully answered the argument for the materiality of the human soul ... by asking whether there might possibly have been other inlets to ideas besides our present senses... 'the same soul [says Clark] may, in another state, have different ways of perception.' " See also Hall, ch. 1. Reed (41) suggests that this language derives from Erasmus Darwin's Zoonomia (1792-4), but he assumes the pre-Viscomi 1793 date for MHH. Darwin seems a promising source for my later discussion of FZ. Reed also argues that Dugald Stewart's use of Rudiger Boscovic to convert matter to energy makes Priestley less fearsome to the anti-materialists than Darwin will become (36-39).

(6.) Feminist critics have been particularly active in exploring social constructions of the body; see Sandra Bartky; Judith Butler, Catherine Gallagher and Thomas Laqueur, eds.; Mary Jacobus, Evelyn Fox Keller and Sally Shuttleworth, eds.; and Jaggar and Bordo.

(7.) For ongoing controversies in reading this poem, see Richardson; Glausser 87-91; Bindman, Mellor, and Eaves in HLQ issue.

WORKS CITED